Portfolio 2007 Review

This is the year where I was very cautious. Most of the time I had only about 50% invested.

My YTD performance is 35.55 %. Nothing fantastic, but satisfied. Most forummers I know have achieved 50-80%. Well, what to do if I extrapolate my performance with what I invested, it is around 70% ...yeah IQ jing shen.

Even though I tried to stay out of the market since Sep 07 as I knew things will get worse, I itchy hand went to buy China Milk and Darco. They have respectively fell and cut down my portfolio by 30+K.

Lesson learnt - Discipline means discipline. When you have decided the course of action, whether the market moves up, you should disregard it. Treat it as bo pian, ming bu shi ni de.

My biggest winner in terms of cash this FY is CSC, which more than doubled and contributed half of my gains . It is indeed a speculative stock, but constrution was in doldrums in the last few years, and with the government initiative to revamp Singapore with 2 Integrated Resorts, Sports Hub, Circle line and property boom in singapore, it was a strong beneficiary. It was cheap and it was a good play.
I bought mostly at 20 cents and sold most at 43 cents. A good thing is that I did have discipline and was not greedy. Make money - sell.

My next big winner is Pan United Marine. Although I bough at around 50+ cents a year ago, I have been entering and exiting it a few times. My cost this FY is around 1.6+ and was unfortunately had a mandatory take over by Dubai Drydocks. I sold it around 2.41 a cool 50% gain. It still had lots of cash, strong book orders till 2009 and generous dividends.

I had other good winners like Techcomp about 50% (32 - 50 cents) Ecowise (Doubled) and Superbowl (50%) but wasn't bought at big quantities to have much impact.

Now my failures.
i ) Longcheer, which I did not fundamentally understand its business landscape and competitors. I made the investment because of the 3G license which did not materialse. Its business model became focus more and more on low cost handphones and their profits plunge. Also, handphone makers also spin off their internal R&D departments and buy from this spin-offs. The cash cow perios was over.
ii) Memtech, also a play on 3G. It also has a high dividend rate, but I don't understand why it is still languishing.
iii) China Milk - still smarting because of high PE 13

Lessons learnt
- Be more discipline
- Research more into the companies businesss landscape before investing
- Given a choice buy companies with stronger pricing power